(5) Of much like kind are those impressions of Nature, which are imposed upon the mind by the sex, by the age, by the region, by health and sickness, by beauty and deformity, and the like, which are inherent and not extern; and again, those which are caused by extern fortune, as sovereignty, nobility, obscure birth, riches, want, magistracy, privateness, prosperity, adversity, constant fortune, variable fortune, rising per saltum, per gradus, and the like.  And, therefore, we see that Plautus maketh it a wonder to see an old man beneficent, benignitas hujis ut adolescentuli est.  Saint Paul concludeth that severity of discipline was to be used to the Cretans, increpa eos dure, upon the disposition of their country, Cretensus semper mendaces, malae bestiae, ventres.  Sallust noteth that it is usual with kings to desire contradictories:  Sed plerumque regiae voluntates, ut vehementes sunt, sic mobiles, saepeque ipsae sibi advers.  Tacitus observeth how rarely raising of the fortune mendeth the disposition:  solus Vespasianus mutatus in melius.  Pindarus maketh an observation, that great and sudden fortune for the most part defeateth men qui magnam felicitatem concoquere non possunt.  So the Psalm showeth it is more easy to keep a measure in the enjoying of fortune, than in the increase of fortune; Divitiae si affluant, nolite cor apponere.  These observations and the like I deny not but are touched a little by Aristotle as in passage in his Rhetorics, and are handled in some scattered discourses; but they were never incorporate into moral philosophy, to which they do essentially appertain; as the knowledge of this diversity of grounds and moulds doth to agriculture, and the knowledge of the diversity of complexions and constitutions doth to the physician, except we mean to follow the indiscretion of empirics, which minister the same medicines to all patients.

(6) Another article of this knowledge is the inquiry touching the affections; for as in medicining of the body, it is in order first to know the divers complexions and constitutions; secondly, the diseases; and lastly, the cures:  so in medicining of the mind, after knowledge of the divers characters of men’s natures, it followeth in order to know the diseases and infirmities of the mind, which are no other than the perturbations and distempars of the affections.  For as the ancient politiques in popular estates were wont to compare the people to the sea, and the orators to the winds; because as the sea would of itself be calm and quiet, if the winds did not move and trouble it; so the people would be peaceable and tractable if the seditious orators did not set them in working and agitation:  so it may be fitly said, that the mind in the nature thereof would be temperate and stayed, if the affections, as winds, did not put it into tumult and perturbation.  And here again I find strange, as before, that Aristotle should have written divers volumes of Ethics, and never handled